Observer News: Preserving historic Riverview graveyard a lifelong mission
Preserving historic Riverview graveyard a lifelong mission
================================================================================
kevin on 23/10/2013 17:09:00
By KEVIN BRADY
At the end of a dusty, dead-end street choked with gnarled trees and brush,
nature is slowly erasing the monuments to some of the founding fathers and
mothers of South County.
One the county’s oldest graveyards, Riverview’s Samford Cemetery marks the
resting place for members of the Ransome, Manning and Buzbee families, with even
a Russian princess among the bodies thought to be buried there.
More than 100 headstones dot the old graveyard but at least six times that many
souls rest there, according to Wimauma’s Sue Bunting who has devoted her life
to preserving the cemetery on Cone Grove Road just off U.S. Highway 301 in
Riverview.
“There could be 650 people buried there,” said Bunting, president of the
Samford Cemetery Association Inc., a nonprofit corporation which has overseen
the property since 1995.
A partial survey of the one-acre plot in 2011 using ground-penetrating radar
found evidence of at least 600 bodies on the property, said Bunting, who worked
with researchers from the University of South Florida’s anthropology
department on the survey.
“They found graves we never knew were there,” said Bunting whose
great-great-grandmother is buried at Samford.
Vienna Henry was the first person buried in the graveyard — then called Peru
Cemetery — in the early 1800s, according to Bunting’s research.
Peru was founded in the 1830s on the south side of the Alafia River, decades
before Riverview which was settled in 1885 on the north side of the river,
according to the Tampa Historical Society. Peru, a name that today only appears
on the earliest maps of the area, was absorbed into Riverview in the 1940s.
The cemetery was renamed to honor Alexander Samford, a Methodist minister who
died in an American Indian raid in 1891. Despite its age, his grave marker, a
striking five-foot sandstone obelisk, is one of the best preserved in the
cemetery today.
A Russian princess, Natalia Polisky, was also buried there in the early years of
the last century said Bunting, who spent two years doing nothing but researching
the cemetery, digging out court documents, death certificates and talking to
elderly residents. She found the story of the princess, who was married to her
great-uncle, in an old edition of the Tampa Tribune from the 1970s.
The last burial cemetery at Samford — also known as the Dusenberry Cemetery to
many during the last century — took place in the early 1990s. There will be no
new ones. Florida law prohibits new burials at any cemetery without a plot plan,
a map of where all the bodies are buried.
The law has left some families holding deeds to worthless burial plots.
“Plots were sold [in the past] that people did not have the right to sell,”
Bunting said. “People are still coming out of the woodwork today [asking about
their plots] but there’s nothing we can do for them. My heart just breaks over
it.”
The cemetery fell into disrepair in the 1980s and despite calls for volunteers
to help out over the years, one the last major cleanups was in 2009. The job of
maintaining the cemetery on Cone Grove Road has fallen on Bunting and her ailing
husband. But while her spirit is willing, the physical toll of pulling up weeds
and clearing undergrowth has become a grueling one for the couple, now in their
60s.
“You see families come by sometimes and clean it up a little, but as a rule it
gets overgrown,” said William Hart, who has lived across the street from
Samford since 1985.
One visitor with a relative in the graveyard told Hart he wanted to move the
body because of the condition of the cemetery “but he was told it would cost
$50,000,” Hart said.
“The cemetery is such a mess now,” said Bunting, who plans a major cleanup
of the lot once her husband recovers from his near-fatal fall from a horse last
year. “I’ve asked for help with the cleanup but people don’t come forward.
It’s a sad situation.”
Families dying off or moving is a common problem when it comes to maintenance of
the area’s older cemeteries, said Shelby Bender, co-author with Elizabeth
Laramie Dunham of Tampa’s Historic Cemeteries, a 128-page soft-cover book
released earlier this year.
“Many of the descendants of those who are buried in the older cemeteries have
either passed away or may have moved out of the area so it’s not convenient
for them to come back and maintain the properties,” said Bender, president of
the East Hillsborough Historical Society who has written three books about Plant
City.
“You do have some older graveyards that hold regular picnics and cleanups but
it’s all about building that community awareness,” Bender said.
Maintenance of old cemeteries is an issue throughout the Bay area, according to
David Parsons, a librarian at the Florida History and Genealogy Library in
Tampa.
“Sometimes it’s the age of the cemetery and over the years those responsible
for maintenance change. Of the 83 cemeteries in Tampa, only four are maintained
by the city.”
Losing historic cemeteries is losing a piece of our collective soul, Bender
said.
“The history of our communities is there. The stories of the people who made
the area what it is today are there. I would like to think people would care
about that and come out and help [maintain the graveyards] although I think our
current society doesn’t care as much about history today.”
Interested in volunteering to help clean up the Samford Cemetery? Contact Sue
Bunting by email, baquatic1@verizon.net.
Email Shelby Bender, sbenderpc@aol.com, for more information on her book about
Tampa’s old cemeteries.
Historic area cemeteries
* Alderman-Pelote Cemetery, Lithia, established in 1851
* Antioch Cemetery, Thonotosassa, established in 1884
* Bethlehem Cemetery, Dover, established in 1857
* Bethlehem Memorial Cemetery, Ft. Lonesome, established in 1876
* Brandon Family Cemetery, Brandon, established in 1857
* Cedar Grove Baptist Church Cemetery, Keysville, established in 1859
* Centro Español Memorial Park Cemetery, Tampa, established in 1891
* Fellowship Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery, Wimauma, established in 1875
* Hackney Riverview Cemetery, aka Riverview Cemetery, Riverview, established in
1886
* Hopewell Church Cemetery, Tampa, established in 1872
* Mathews Cemetery, Mango, established in 1868
* Mount Enon Cemetery, Plant City, established in 1841
* Shiloh Cemetery, Plant City, established in 1841
Source: HillsboroughCounty Cemeteries.com